The Almighty Has Worked Marvels for Me

It is quite something to witness a final profession in the first flush of one’s initial formation. For all the crises and difficulties the novitiate brings (including, but not limited to, learning how to sit with dignity in choir) the process of handing oneself over to God is, thankfully, all in God’s own hands—and this fact becomes unignorable in a liturgy as profoundly, visually striking as the perpetual profession of religious vows, where a sister literally lays herself at Christ’s feet in the act of prostration. This self-giving prostration is, in Dominican tradition, the place in which she receives from her superior the question, “What do you seek?” and gives the answer: “God’s mercy and yours.”